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Stellaris |OT| Imperium Universalis

bjaelke said:
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Definitely getting it for that price, but it's going to have to take a backseat because of Civ VI.
 
ThoseDeafMutes said:
My dream for Stellaris is for them to bring out one single, highly detailed scenario featuring humans entering the galactic community, but with fixed alien races, who have politics, a sense of history that they have been a part of, meaningful geography, and so on.

Hyperlanes is basically the only kind of FTL that seems conducive to meaningful geography in Stellaris so far, but most people don't like limiting their games to just that.
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This is basically what I hope for from the modding community: a grand scenario modding project that changed much of the game but still work within its basic framework. Much like Darkest Hour and its much acclaimed Kaiserreich mod project. Stellaris have a solid base, and I hope either Paradox, or modder, or ideally both work on to improve it. We've been only some months after launch so hopefully big modding project will started out soon.

As for geography, it could be emulated by making the celestial bodies behaves differently to each other and have effect to its surrounding territory. Like how Black Hole should create a gravity well that could create a bottleneck for FTL route. Or how a dense star makes travelling within the system cumbersome. There are many possibilities of recreating geographical differences besides resorting to hyperlane travel.

All of this talk makes me realize how Stellaris is focused much of its gameplay element for military conquest. Many researchs in the game is just exist to make you able to build stronger ship and better module, or to make the governance of your empire less cumbersome. There are hardly any research that related to exploration besides faster scanning. They've made it so simple that a new space faring able to traverse near a black hole without risk (besides the aliens that lives through it).

Perhaps this happened due to the focus on customizable military ship builder. Hopefully if the upcoming patches and expansion is any indication, Paradox will focus on what Stellaris did best as of now: exploration.

LurkerPrime said:
Still, as far as context, the best way I can think to deliver it would be to add Civilization-style city-states that go about the galaxy doing their thing, with a handful of ways of handling them, keeping the game procedurally-generated rather than resorting to scenario-based gameplay and splitting development up.

Leviathan is kind of broaching what I'm talking about, but specifically I mean a handful of microempires that are very different from actual empires--like a society of space bugs that are slowly growing out into the galaxy, rogue AI that rose against their creators, Leviathan-style raiders, nomadic trader peoples, or quasi-dimensional beings looking for a laugh. They wouldn't be focused on winning so much as continuing their purpose, with a few methods to directly end their threat/interruptions, and benefits/penalties to their continued existence and/or destruction.

It could be the sort of thing that drives to empires into an alliance, trying to crush a nascent threat. Or the thing that two empires fight over, because it is valuable to both of them but will only ally with one. Or it could be something that an empire appreciates, only to have another empire destroy it for their own sake, sparking conflict between them. By virtue of the microempire existing, it could drive the storytelling indirectly.

I just feel that everything should go back to Stellaris' core pitch of being procedurally generated, ethos-based, and event-based. It has the potential to do interesting things beyond that of the other Paradox grand strategy titles due to the sheer scope of it all.
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I'm not against procedurally generated content. But in the case of Stellaris, it could have been benefited a lot by having a fixed scenario content besides the procedurally generated one. Why? Because Stellaris is a 4X game that was designed with numerous framework design of grand strategy game. Many of grand strategy game enjoyment comes from roleplaying besides empire making and the game rewards you by doing so. Meanwhile with Stellaris, it only rewards you when you follow its 4X pattern. The big but here is that the Stellaris have numerous limitation toward military conquest that comes from its grand strategy root of Paradox. So in my eyes, it's either you try to roleplay and feels empty or you do what the game rewards you for and get frustated by its other numerous mechanic.

Other reason why I feel Stellaris would've benefited from fixed scenario is because Paradox own background. The people behind it have rich knowledge and vast research access of history. I'm confident that Paradox writer's could have made a compelling scifi political conflict scenario if they take inspiration from the history stuff they're so accustomed to. Even then, their scifi stuffs that appears up until now in Stellaris is terrific, which makes me want them to see if they ever managed to mix it with their expertise.

That being said, the upcoming Heinlein patch and Leviathan expansion is definitely a direction that I'm hoping for. More exploration, and interaction of your empire with the game which means a better experience when you tried to play as non-military empire. One thing that I particularly like in Heinlein patch is how they finally make Fallen Empire no longer only act as an external threat. It's frustrating that the only way to have their technology is to dominate them by force.

I just hope the stuffs that coming in Heinlein and Leviathan wouldn't hindered by RNG, like many of anomaly events that obscured by the repeating one.
 
davidbruy said:
How does this compare to the new master of orion? got pretty bored with the new one and looking for a new 4X space game.
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It's a much better game, IMHO. Only the current hum drum mid to late game can maybe be compare to MoO, and that should hopefully be remedied with the upcoming path and DLC.

It's 4X but with some grand strategy flair. For one, there is some level of asymmetry in the game, even a lot if you want it. Fallen empires and other larger players mean everyone isn't necessarily equal and will require different tactics to deal with.

Population isn't just another resource either, pops have their own ethos and political agendas, and that can have significant implicaiton on how the game develops.

I'd say give it a shot.
 
Lister said:
It's a much better game, IMHO. Only the current hum drum mid to late game can maybe be compare to MoO, and that should hopefully be remedied with the upcoming path and DLC.

It's 4X but with some grand strategy flair. For one, there is some level of asymmetry in the game, even a lot if you want it. Fallen empires and other larger players mean everyone isn't necessarily equal and will require different tactics to deal with.

Population isn't just another resource either, pops have their own ethos and political agendas, and that can have significant implicaiton on how the game develops.

I'd say give it a shot.
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Think I will. Watched a gameplay video and what I like is that it's real-time. In other words, you don't have to press the end turn button.
 
Leviathan's price has surpassed my grandest expectations. I think I can justify getting the Plantoid DLC with it if there's a discount it--here's hoping!

Man, I'm excited.
Shengar said:
I'm not against procedurally generated content. But in the case of Stellaris, it could have been benefited a lot by having a fixed scenario content besides the procedurally generated one. Why? Because Stellaris is a 4X game that was designed with numerous framework design of grand strategy game. Many of grand strategy game enjoyment comes from roleplaying besides empire making and the game rewards you by doing so. Meanwhile with Stellaris, it only rewards you when you follow its 4X pattern. The big but here is that the Stellaris have numerous limitation toward military conquest that comes from its grand strategy root of Paradox. So in my eyes, it's either you try to roleplay and feels empty or you do what the game rewards you for and get frustated by its other numerous mechanic.

Other reason why I feel Stellaris would've benefited from fixed scenario is because Paradox own background. The people behind it have rich knowledge and vast research access of history. I'm confident that Paradox writer's could have made a compelling scifi political conflict scenario if they take inspiration from the history stuff they're so accustomed to. Even then, their scifi stuffs that appears up until now in Stellaris is terrific, which makes me want them to see if they ever managed to mix it with their expertise.

That being said, the upcoming Heinlein patch and Leviathan expansion is definitely a direction that I'm hoping for. More exploration, and interaction of your empire with the game which means a better experience when you tried to play as non-military empire. One thing that I particularly like in Heinlein patch is how they finally make Fallen Empire no longer only act as an external threat. It's frustrating that the only way to have their technology is to dominate them by force.

I just hope the stuffs that coming in Heinlein and Leviathan wouldn't hindered by RNG, like many of anomaly events that obscured by the repeating one.
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I dunno how much faith I have in Paradox's writing skills. Their events are always good, but the clunky presentation only works due to their games' RNG-based nature; in the context of a campaign, it would just stick out too much, or be painfully repetitive unless they were massively expanded in variety and scope. 100% agree that Stellaris would be improved by a more varied focus beyond just warfare though--I highly expect it will soon (first full expansion, I'm hoping.)

For writing, I suppose Heinlin (or was it Leviathan) will be their true test, having the Failbetter dev on board to class things up. Really looking forward to those events.
 
Wish I discovered this game sooner as its exactly what I was looking for in a space strategy game.

What I love about it is that it doesn't rush you into anything and its relaxing & fun to play.

What I was finding in MoO is that it felt that the game was rushing you to try to colonize more planets than the AI and I could never do that.

Highly recommend this to any strategy gamer.
 
LurkerPrime said:
I dunno how much faith I have in Paradox's writing skills. Their events are always good, but the clunky presentation only works due to their games' RNG-based nature; in the context of a campaign, it would just stick out too much, or be painfully repetitive unless they were massively expanded in variety and scope. 100% agree that Stellaris would be improved by a more varied focus beyond just warfare though--I highly expect it will soon (first full expansion, I'm hoping.)
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By scenario, I don't mean it as a linear, mission based campaign as you would fine in some 4X or RTS games. It's just like any other Paradox game where there's fixed set of empires, alien races, relationships between them, and their history. After that, it'll be as RNG determined as any other Paradox games does (like how Poland-Lithuania commonwealth become a blob that almost consumed entire of Europe in my EUIV game). Paradox writing skills come into play in setting up those history, politics, and events that could and would happened within an empire.
 
Wow, releasing the xpac the day before Civ VI is a bold move.
May be counting on the usual blowback after a civ game is rated "Wait for xpacs".
 
Aureon said:
Wow, releasing the xpac the day before Civ VI is a bold move.
May be counting on the usual blowback after a civ game is rated "Wait for xpacs".
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I don't think they are afraid of Civ. Sure, lots of people will be playing Civ, but Stellaris is kind of it's own thing.

Anyway, this month really is the strategy/4x month: Civ VI, Endless Legend's new xpac, Stellaris DLC, EUIV xpac and Endless Space 2 all in the span of a month.
 
CloudWolf said:
I don't think they are afraid of Civ. Sure, lots of people will be playing Civ, but Stellaris is kind of it's own thing.

Anyway, this month really is the strategy/4x month: Civ VI, Endless Legend's new xpac, Stellaris DLC, EUIV xpac and Endless Space 2 all in the span of a month.
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There's also that Nobunaga's Ambition game. There's so much to sink time into on the 4x front that I'm happy to wait for things to pan out for Civ 6.
 
DBT85 said:
Because like most things, its never a direct currency conversion.

Though having taken a closer look, It could actually come in a little cheaper.
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Usually it's not a direct conversion but it seems with the species pack, the UK pricing is actually cheaper than that. $7.99 is more than the £5.59 that is priced at.
 
I, uh... just noticed that there's a giant bug peeking out of the black hole in that Leviathans pricing pic. Not sure what I thought before.

Huh.
 
I don't suppose this game ever goes on sale? Got it added to my wishlist. Dont wanna pay full price and it goes on sale the following week...
 
I really like the addition of humanoids, to give it that sci-fi show aesthetic. Didn't even realise I missed them, but I do.

The rest also sounds great, bloom and cuties all. Those starfish are out of this world.
 
TheVoidDragon said:
That devblog says "one of the features we really wanted to get in for release but never could" and I'm fairly sure I've read similar things in previous devblogs. Was the game rushed and released before it was actually finished?
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I don't think so--it doesn't feel incomplete or anything. Mostly, I get the feeling they had to make some tough decisions during development to avoid working on it forever.

The only noticeable absence in the release version is mid-game polish, which makes it feel decidedly uninteresting compared to early-game, filled with things to discover, or late-game, filled with threats to confront. There are also some balance and polish issues. But every patch has been working towards fixing these issues, along with a host of other things.
 
TheVoidDragon said:
Was the game rushed and released before it was actually finished?
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That's certainly a valid theory. The game was announced after Hearths of Iron IV yet released before it (different teams, I know). Stellaris came out on May 9th just before Paradox Interactive went up for public trading (IPO) and that gave them the chance to post some positive news ahead of the stock market entry.
 
TheVoidDragon said:
That devblog says "one of the features we really wanted to get in for release but never could" and I'm fairly sure I've read similar things in previous devblogs. Was the game rushed and released before it was actually finished?
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Every game developer, ever, has had to cut things from his dream vision.
 
Aureon said:
Every game developer, ever, has had to cut things from his dream vision.
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I know that, but the impression given by the devblogs is that they ran out of time to go beyond just the simple features. They way they've worded some things suggests that it released before they wanted to, and the patches are now bringing it up to the standard it should have been on release.

They've said in other devblogs that they know they didn't go far enough with some things and it's lacking. It seems like it's less "We can do it better now" and more "We didn't get time to do it right in the first place" with some of these things.
 
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